


Like the surprise you saw coming

by apricity



Category: Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: Community: femslash09, F/F, Femslash, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-20
Updated: 2009-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-20 03:20:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricity/pseuds/apricity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily would be lying if she said she didn’t see it coming, but she’d also be lying if she said she hadn’t enjoyed some of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like the surprise you saw coming

**Author's Note:**

> Written for queenzulu as part of femslash09.

  
Lily crosses her arms and taps absently with one finger on as she stares blankly across the room. She knows she should be moving around the room, chatting up potential buyers and making contacts, even if this is still just a ‘job that pays the rent’.  
  
What she’s just seen, however, is making her brain catch whenever she tries to think of something else. She’d be lying if she told herself she wasn’t shocked, but she’d be also lying if she said she couldn’t have seen it coming.   
  
  
The perks that Andy, and therefore the rest of them, had been getting had been great and started out seeming pretty reasonable. But then there was that night when Andy had gotten an emergency call on the cell phone that had suddenly become an extra appendage and decided to make up for dragging Lily out of the movie and into her office by letting Lily walk around the Runway closet while she dealt with the developing jacket fiasco. Of course she’d been in the middle of a pile of bags and shoes when Andy came back, what girl wouldn’t be? And of course she’d been joking when she said she wanted to take them home. She hadn’t expected Andy to turn around and tell her she could take the newest Lious Vuitton clutch.

  
This coming from the girl who had, at age 12, managed to both feel guilty about sneaking their own snacks into the movie theater and rail on for twenty minutes about how unfair the movie theater prices were and how they were a sad statement about American consumerism and complacency and any number of other things Lily no longer remembered (because no matter how many versions of the rant she had heard, her attention never lasted past that point) was every bit as weird as hearing Doug talk about car engines. But she’d wanted the purse and Andy really didn’t seem to mind, so she went with it.   
  
She moves over closer to a group clustered around a photo and almost slips into the conversation before her mind catches again, this time on that sudden improvement of Andy’s ability to ask other people to do her favors. She can still remember sitting in the restaurant with Andy and Doug, back when Andy stilled showed up when she promised, waiting for Nate to get out and watching it happen.

  
The Clackers had been trying to pull together an article Andy swore was almost substantive, but they were having trouble getting in contact with one particular person. When Doug let it slip that the person was a friend of a friend, the wheedling had begun.

  
“Come on,” Andy tilted her chin down and to the side so that the light hit her face just so and eyes looked bigger than you could imagine, “please?” 

  
So maybe Lily wouldn't have noticed if she hadn’t been watching her friend’s face so carefully, but it was still weird. And it wasn’t like she’d ever really had trouble getting people to do things for her. She was so hardworking and earnest that most people had been happy to help her. The only charm she’d ever employed was the awkward and unintentional sort that came from an independent streak that made asking for help so uncomfortable that she was prone to excessive gesticulation and slightly meandering tangents. 

  
Then there was the night, Lily muses as moves back through the crowd, just a week or so before Andy had become incapable of carrying on a conversation for more than 15 minutes without mentioning something about Miranda, when after two drinks on an empty stomach (because she wasn’t quite sure she’d fit into the outfit she’ planned for tomorrow) Andy had begun to go on about how fashion was like literature, some mixture of art and the influences of it’s period. Lily could only assume this was due more to drinking the the Kool-aide than the wine. It had been one thing for her to admit that there is more to Runway than fashion, but for her to say that there is more to fashion than belts and ruffles was pushing it.   
  
Lily begins walking back through the exhibit again and it seems impossible that just a few minutes ago she’d been so happy to see Andy looking at her show with a smile and her look of concentration, with the sharp attentiveness that was so much about what made Andy _Andy_ and the same little pursing of the lips that had amused Lily for years by being both annoyingly cute and completely endearing at the same time. But she had to admit that the look she’d seen while Andy had edited and fact checked her own articles into perfection for so many years, was now something Lily was most likely to see cross her face when takes the Dragon Lady’s calls, when she looks at a window display on 5th Ave or as she picks an accessory on her way out the door.  
  
She’d be lying if she said she didn’t see it coming, she admits to herself as she moves away from the person trying to make eye contact with her, but she’d also be lying if she said she hadn’t enjoyed some of it.

  
She barely even remembers when it had first occurred to her or what made her realize it; whether it had been the way it was easier to spend time with her than anyone else or the fact that sometimes Andy’s giggles last longer than you’d expect them to. All she remembers is being completely convinced that it must have been entirely in her head. The few times she’d gotten some proof that it wasn’t just her imagination had always been followed by some period of awkwardness, the length of which was always related to the severity of the breach of what Doug referred to as ‘strict friendliness’. A hand left somewhere too long was good for a few second’s worth of quiet awkwardness; that tipsy kiss in high school had gotten at least three minutes of embarrassed giggles; that one night in college, just after she’d started dating Nate, when they’d worked their way through most of a box of wine had bought an entire week of guilt induced avoidance and two years of denial.   
  
Lily glances toward the window and watches as Nate begins to walk down the street, away from Andy, then pauses. She sees Andy’s whole body jerk suddenly and she can almost hear the ring that she’s grown to hate over the last few months. She watches as, just as she would have predicted, Andy scrambles to answer the phone. But then she pauses to look at Nate and for just a second Lily feels something that’s shockingly and awfully like hope. But then they're both walking in opposite directions, Nate with his hands jammed in his pockets and Andy with the phone pressed hard to her ear.    
  
The Andy she knew had been madly in love with Nate. And, honestly, that had sucked in a lot of ways. But it was better than this. 


End file.
